Roadmap96: MAP27 - The Future ...

MAP27: THE FUTURE ...

"Our lives begin to end the day we become
silent about things that matter."
-- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I am often asked what I think the Internet will be like in the
future. The best answer that I can give is, "I have no idea, but it
sure does sound neat."

I recently attended a conference that the International Space Camp
held for the U.S. State Teachers of the Year. At this conference,
one of the presenters -- an executive at BellSouth -- told the story
of how a famous person once predicted that the telephone would
revolutionize communication, and that every town would have *one* so
that they could keep in touch with the outside world. I guess the
moral of this story is that if you make predictions about the future,
you run a really good chance of looking silly when the future
actually arrives.

I do know that the Internet is the precursor to an "Information
Superhighway" that is going to be based on high-speed, fiber optic
cables and a combination TV/Computer/Fax/Telephone that will allow us
to access a mountain of information in seconds with just a few simple
commands. (Hopefully, by that time we will be able to forget all of
those FTP commands!)

I do know that the Information Superhighway will change the way we
look at entertainment, research, shopping, interpersonal
communication and education.

I also know that there are some obstacles that must be overcome
before the Information Superhighway can achieve its fullest
potential. Fortunately, the problems that the Internet is facing
today -- universal access, parental control over the information
children have access to, censorship issues -- are all problems that
have been dealt with before by the two most overworked, underpaid,
and underappreciated groups in our society: classroom teachers and
librarians. There are a lot of things that we can learn from
teachers and librarians. Hopefully, this time around we will
actually listen to them. :)

I am truly excited about the long-range plans for the Information
Superhighway. The problem with long-range plans, however, is that
long-range planners often lose sight of present needs. The future of
the Information Superhighway will indeed be incredible, but that
future isn't here yet. Until that future *IS* here, we need to
remember that the 100,000 people who join the Internet each month
need to be trained to use TODAY'S technology.

That is what this workshop is all about. Twenty-six lessons ago,
I told you that

Over the next few weeks I am going to:

Show you around the Internet;

Give you some basic commands that will help you use the tools
of the Internet more effectively;

Point you in the direction of people who can help you if you
ever get lost; and

Give you a glimpse of what the coming Information Superhighway
may actually look like.

How am I going to do all of this? Well, each one of these daily
lessons will give you a glimpse at one small part of the Internet.
We will talk about particular tools and sites, show you some traps to
avoid, and even show you some basic commands that will help you use
the tools to your own advantage. In the end, I hope that you will
gain a better understanding of the individual parts and pieces that,
when put together, make up the Internet.

Thank you for joining me on this trip. I hope you have had fun,
and I wish you the best of luck as you continue your journeys around
the Internet.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Patrick Douglas Crispen is a senior at the University of Alabama
majoring in Economics through the College of Arts and Sciences.
(Yes, you heard right ... he's a student!). Prior to attending the
University, he worked at the United States Space Camp in Huntsville,
Alabama, as a Simulations Director and founding staff member of the
Space Academy Level II program.

Crispen first connected to the Internet in the Spring of 1992 so
that he could send e-mail to his father, an engineer at Boeing,
asking him for money. Crispen has paid his way through school with
student loans and work-study jobs, and in the Spring of 1994 he
accepted a position working the overnight shift at the front desk of
a University residence hall. Using the computer at the front desk,
he taught himself how to use the Internet in an attempt to keep
himself awake.

In May of 1994, Crispen competed in his first Internet Hunt ...
and won. In the same month, he started working on an introductory
Internet training presentation for the National Association of
College and University Residence Hall's 1994 National Conference at
Northern Arizona University. His presentation at Northern Arizona
University was the only program out of 300 to receive a perfect score
from the participants (although the conference's programming staff
misplaced his scores until after the close of the conference). In
the months that have followed, he has repeated versions of this
presentation for the University of Alabama's students and staff, and
at various conferences around the country.

During the summer of 1994, Crispen decided to expand his
presentation into a month-long Internet training workshop to be
conducted over the Internet. This workshop ("Roadmap") started
accepting participants in July of 1994. By October of 1994,
word-of-mouth advertising for the workshop had been so successful
that over 62,000 people from 77 countries had enrolled in one of the
three Roadmap workshop distribution lists.

The original version of the Roadmap workshop has been distributed
to over 500,000 people around the world, making the Roadmap workshop
the most popular Internet training workshop in history. What makes
this even more incredible is that at the time he wrote the workshop
lessons Crispen did not even own a computer (he wrote the entire
Roadmap workshop using the University of Alabama's public access
computer labs).

According to Crispen, he wrote the workshop "to give new users
free training on how to use the Internet, to give the University of
Alabama some positive publicity, and to ensure that I can get a *JOB*
when (and if) I graduate. The Career Center told me that the most
important part of a job search is 'networking'. So, I networked." :)

Crispen is currently a student employee at the University of
Alabama's Computer Center Helpdesk. He is also the author of "Atlas
for the Information Superhighway" (ISBN 0-538-65864-9), an Internet
textbook published by South Western Educational Publishing.